


Everything We Thought We Knew

by navyblueoveryou



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Teenagers, no infections here!, we're going to HS with dina and ellie!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26335909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navyblueoveryou/pseuds/navyblueoveryou
Summary: Dina is a senior at North Shore High School in southern California, and honestly, graduation seems ages away. She's ready to move on from this chapter of her life and start fresh in Colorado.But a new and unlikely connection has her reconsidering everything she thought she already knew.(Dina centric, stream of consciousness formatting. Everyone is 18+ in this fic in case we get into some flirty feels later on. My first multi-chapter attempt for this fandom.)
Relationships: Dina & Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 47





	Everything We Thought We Knew

**Author's Note:**

> Hello hello! Welcome to my first attempt at a multi-chapter fic for TLOU2! And actually, this is my first attempt at a modern AU, so let's just take it easy. I graduated high school ten years ago, so...I'm old but I'm trying lol.
> 
> You might look at this and say "hey, this formatting is similar to some other fics I've seen out there" - you're right, I've gone back to my stream of consciousness roots for this one (thanks for the inspo and encouragement @acceptabletwig, you are the GOAT).
> 
> anyway, I'll probably have some playlists for these because ya'll know how we do things around here. Here are some tunes that might help get you on the wave for this chapter:
> 
> Pretty Girl - Clairo  
> Something Has to Change - The Japanese House  
> Number One Fan - MUNA  
> What Happened to Us? - Shura  
> Television Romance - Pale Waves
> 
> Let me know how we're feeling after this first chapter! I'm going to do my best to stay on top of updates. As always, leave comments or hit me up on tumblr: dinaspapercrown.tumblr.com/ask

“Dina! Get up!” 

Dina sighs at the sound of her mother’s voice shouting up the stairs to her. She’s just finished tying her hair up into a messy bun, standing in front of the full-length mirror and taking a closer look at her outfit. She’s picked a mustard yellow hoodie with a pair of fitted black overalls. Torn at the knees and cuffed at the ankle, Dina carefully laces up a pair of her trusty Doc Martens, matte black from all of the wear they get. She thinks she looks cute. 

“I’m already up!” she yells back, grabbing her backpack and throwing it over her shoulders. _Ugh._ At 18, if she wasn’t just a few months from graduating, she’d legitimately consider dropping out. It’s not that Dina isn’t a good student - she’s consistently on the honor roll, always racking up straight A’s, and has a perfect 4.0 GPA. She’s already been accepted into several ivy league schools that her mother pushed her into applying to, but Dina doesn’t choose any of them. She’s decided on Colorado instead. She loves the mountains and the overall energy. She feels like the only person who has ever wanted to _leave_ California.

Her older sister Talia is supportive but reminds Dina not to let her potential be lost to a city built on good vibes. So fucking annoying. She reminds Talia that the entire state of California is heckled for their _good vibes_ by every other state in the country. 

Dina’s phone lights up with an incoming text. 

**_Good morning my beautiful angel, I’m outsiiiide!! Off to hell we go!_**

She laughs and shakes her head at the message with a loving eye roll. Her lifelong best friend, Lauren, is waiting for her out front. The ride to school is only 15 minutes, and it’s never long enough. It only gives them time for like, _three_ songs worth of carpool karaoke while simultaneously catching up on gossip from the previous day. 

**Coming babes!**

Dina bolts down the stairs and out the door, shouting a half-assed _BYE!_ through the doorway. She climbs into the front seat of Lauren’s 1980s _vintage_ convertible, happy that she’s gone with the messy bun today. The wind will absolutely ruin her hair otherwise, but it’ll be an easy fix once they pull into the school lot. Lauren considers the low 60s weather warm enough for top-down cruising. Dina accepts it solely for Lauren. 

They give each other a squeeze over the center console and Lauren presses a friendly smooch against Dina’s cheek. “Look at you, looking fucking _flawless_ , my queen,” she tells Dina, who playfully milks the compliment for all its worth. 

“Who _me_?” she teases as they speed off, their laughter mixing in with the sound of their music that carries through the sleepy suburb.

Senioritis has completely taken hold of her, but at least she has Lauren to suffer with.

**+**

Dina is well-liked at school. She bounces around friend groups with ease, serving as a bridge between people who may not choose to interact with one another otherwise. Some would say she’s popular, but she doesn’t like to think of it like that. She’s just a people person. That’s all.

Lauren calls her the golden retriever of humans. Loveable, loyal, and absolutely adorable.

The morning flies by surprisingly quickly for a Friday. Dina aces an AP history exam _and_ gets a perfect grade on a paper she didn’t feel totally confident about. Lauren leans over and asks if she loves her enough to write both of their papers for the next assignment. 

During lunch, the cafeteria is a complete and total shitshow. She can barely hear the conversation between her friends over all of the noise, but there’s nothing that can be done about it. The entire senior class is crawling up the walls, desperate to finally be done with this part of their life and to move on to _adulthood._ People have already started chatting about prom, the only event larger than graduation itself. Their school doesn’t do junior prom, so this is absolutely one hundred percent _just about them._ While the plan at the beginning of the school year would have been for Dina to go with her boyfriend Jesse, things have changed since then. Their on again off again relationship is finally off for good thanks to a particularly rough go at it over winter break, and with him staying in California for college, it seemed like the right move to call it quits. He doesn’t sit with them at lunch anymore, and Dina wonders what he tells his friends when she comes up in conversation. If she even does at all. 

She notices him looking at her from a few tables away and she offers him a smile. He gives her a half-smile and goes back to whatever discussion he’s having with his boys. Lauren doesn’t let the interaction go unnoticed.

“No, no, noooo,” she scolds, throwing an arm around Dina’s shoulders protectively. “No ma’am, none of that!” 

Dina laughs uncomfortably as everyone at the table turns their attention to her. She can feel the heat rising to her cheeks. “What? I’m just being p-”

“Polite?” Lauren interrupts. “Fuck that, babe. We don’t need dumbass boys. Forget him.”

Dina focuses on finishing her lunch until the bell sounds and the student body floods into the halls again with a newfound post-meal lethargy. 

**+**

The last class of the day seems to be dragging slower than usual. Dina fights to keep her head up, propping it against the palm of her hand while her elbow balances on the desk. She can see the sun shining outside, hear the birds in the trees just past the windows. She turns her eyes back to the classroom, absentmindedly scanning over her classmates as the teacher drones on. She knows most of them by now, but there’s one person she’s never quite been able to get to know at all. Ellie. Williams…? Yeah, she thinks that sounds right. She’s in the back right corner, feet propped up on the empty seat in front of her, leaning back and twirling a pen around her fingers. She’s got a massive tattoo that covers the majority of her forearm - some kind of foliage and a moth. Dina’s mom would fucking kill her if she ever thought about pulling something like that while living under her roof.

Ellie hangs out with the kids who have sort of been marked as the degenerates of the school, though she’s actually quite smart, as she too is always on the honor roll. Dina sees her skateboarding with a group of guys on the weekends at a local skate park every once in a while when she goes rollerskating. She wishes she could learn how to skateboard. It looks kind of fun.

She doesn’t really know much about Ellie beyond that. They’ve been existing fairly parallel to one another since middle school and might have been paired up once or twice for projects over the years. Every time they had worked together though, Ellie never seemed too interested in chatting. Not out of malice, but out of...shyness, maybe? She seems to be more reserved unless she’s wandering the halls with her group of friends that reminded her of the human embodiment of ruckus. 

Dina does know that Ellie had a girlfriend, Cat, (thanks to Lauren being the know-it-all gossip queen) but they’ve broken up since the start of the year. They’re still friends, or at least Dina assumes they are, as she sees them together before class sometimes. Ellie is a bit of a tomboy, always wearing baggier clothes that look like they could have belonged to an older brother or something. They look good on her, though. Dina wonders if she could pull off that skater/stoner look. Probably not.

“Dina?”

_Fuck._

She brings her eyes to the front of the classroom to meet her teacher’s amused smirk. Mr. Fredrickson. He’s a nice enough guy but gets a sick kick out of calling on people who are obviously oblivious to his lecture. Seems she’s gotten caught in his web this time, and when Dina glances back in Ellie’s direction, she’s looking back with mysteriously green eyes, one corner of her lips turned upwards. _Goddamnit, she’s going to think I was staring at her. I was just--_

“Spacing out?” Mr.Fredrickson completes her thought and a few people snicker. Dina sighs and plays it cool. “Yeah,” she admits aloud, hopefully diverting Ellie’s potential belief that she was gawking. She definitely _wasn’t._ “Sorry.”

“Senioritis...potentially the worst illness to strike seniors,” he tries to joke, but no one laughs.

The bell rings, and the sound of chairs scraping against the floor mixes with chatter and fills the room. Mr. Fredrickson tries to talk over it to remind everyone about an assignment due on Monday, but no one pays him any mind. Dina can see the defeat in his slumped shoulders as he goes back to his desk and kind of feels bad for him. 

She’d hang back and say something if she wasn’t in a rush to meet Lauren - she liked to get them the hell out of the parking lot before the other 599 cars backed up into a wraparound clusterfuck. “Have a good weekend,” she chimes to him, and he offers her an appreciative smile.

“Thanks, Dina. You too.”

While working on a text to her best friend, Dina bumps shoulders with someone as she’s walking through the doorway and into the hall. When she looks up, there’s Ellie and those mysterious greens looking at her. 

“Oh--” she starts, but Ellie just laughs. Her laugh is so...casual. Chill. Very California, but from what Dina knows, Ellie is actually an East Coast transplant that’s taken to the West coast lifestyle rather nicely. 

“Don’t apologize. You’re good.”

Why...Dina can’t move. She’s like, literally stunned. Ellie’s maybe three inches taller than her, and for whatever reason, they’re standing stupid close (presumably due to the halls being packed with students rushing to the doors). She can see the constellation of freckles that are scattered across that pale skin that make the taller girl seem softer. She realizes she’s just standing there, gawking for real this time, and shakes her head with an awkward laugh. “I’m sorry, I just--”

Ellie’s laughing again. “Okay, or apologize. That’s fine, too.”

Dina’s face feels like fire. _Oh my fucking god._ “I…” What does she even say to that? She rolls her eyes and huffs with a little smirk. She’s not going to let Ellie win this. She wants to be a smartass? She’s talking to _Dina_ , for fuck’s sake. Dina straightens her spine a bit, squaring out her shoulders. “Okay, next time I’ll just move on with my day,” she says with a smile, and Ellie smiles back. 

“Well, that would be rude,” her voice carries a tone of amusement, and her face shows it, too. 

“It’d be your fault,” Dina teases. Ellie’s little smirk turns into a toothy smile as she lets out a laugh and looks down at her feet. 

“Yeah,” she says. “I guess it would be.”

“Dina!”

Why is someone literally always calling her name? She looks up in search of the sound. It sounded like Lauren, but Dina doesn’t see her anywhere. The hallway is packed like sardines. It’d be impossible to pick her out right now, anyway.

Dina looks back to Ellie, who is readjusting her backpack. She’s pulled a skateboard from...behind her? It must have been strapped to her bag. 

“Sorry,” Dina says with a shrug, readjusting her backpack as well if only to busy herself. “I thought I heard my best friend. She gets antsy. Ya know, the parking lot mess.”

Ellie lifts her skateboard. It’s worn and beat up. “Easier and I don’t have to deal with the lot or parking fees.”

Dina nods. “Touche. I don’t either, though. Well, not the parking fees, at least.” She smirks. “Carpooling. Saving the world and all that.”

The taller girl smirks and lets out a little scoff or...maybe a laugh? Dina can’t tell. She rolls her eyes, a smile still present on her lips as Lauren calls for Dina again. 

“Dina Dombrowskiiiii!” 

_Oh my God._

There’s Lauren, clearing a path through the crowd like some kind of defensive linebacker. It’s actually quite impressive for someone that’s just a touch taller than 5’5 but built small. When she makes her way over to Dina and Ellie, she looks at the lack of space between their bodies quizzically, then grabs Dina by the arm before offering Ellie a tight-lipped smile. “Let’s go, queen! Don’t make me leave you here! I can’t believe you made me fight my way through these damn hallways to come find you…”

Dina takes a step towards Lauren. It seems like Ellie is headed in the opposite direction, thankfully. This interaction has been wildly awkward and a fantastic start to her weekend. “Okay, well, have a good weekend,” she tries to say coolly, but it comes out a bit rushed. Ellie raises her brows in acknowledgment and gives her a nod.

“See ya, Dina Dombrowski.”

**+**

When they pull up to Dina’s house, Lauren grabs her by the hood of her sweatshirt and stops her from getting out. “Whoa now,” she says, a shit-eating grin plastered to her face. “Hold on, hold on…” she leans the driver’s seat back and lights up a cigarette, offering one to Dina, who declines only because her mother would likely destroy her if she looked through the window. This is common practice for them - sitting outside of Dina’s place while Lauren decompresses with a smoke. Sometimes, if Dina knows she’s coming back to an empty house, she’ll allow herself a drag or two. 

“Were you talking to _Ellie Williams_ earlier?” Lauren asks as if she hadn’t been standing right there for the tail end of their brief interaction.

Dina furrows her brow and makes a face. “Why’re you saying her name like that?”

Lauren shrieks and cackles. “Okay, _were you, though?_ ” Her eyes are wide with curiosity, brows high on her forehead. When Dina doesn’t immediately answer, she shrieks again and leans forward. “Dina!”

“What the fuck, _yes!_ ” Dina exclaims, completely confused by her best friend’s reaction. “I literally just bumped into her on the way out of the classroom and apologized...what’s the big deal?”

Lauren’s back in her seat now, giggling past the filter of her cigarette. “Dina, Dina, Dina. Ellie Williams? Really?”

Dina’s clearly not clued in on something, and it’s starting to irritate her. “What is the fucking deal?” she asks. “Yeah, Ellie Williams. So?”

Lauren’s eyes stay trained on the sky, but she looks deep in thought as smoke billows past her lips. “Did you know she liked you like, freshman year?” 

Dina feels her ears get hot. “No..?” Was she supposed to know that? Lauren makes it sound as if Ellie had screamed it from the rooftops, and Dina was the only one who hadn’t heard it.

Lauren nods almost dramatically. “Yeah, majorly.” She sighs. “Well, I was only asking because I wanted to see what she said. But you were just being you. I would’ve just kept movin’. That’s the difference between us, Deener.”

**+**

Dina lays awake later than usual that night, replaying her interaction with Ellie in her mind like a broken tape. 

There couldn’t be any merit to what Lauren had said. 

...Right?


End file.
